Shelley Winters On Fire!
I don't know about you, but I really like "how I broke into the business" stories. Howie Wiseman just sent me a great one about Shelley Winters and the low-budget film City on Fire:
My first production job was driving a famous Hollywood legend on a disaster picture in Montreal called "City on Fire". She freaked out and fired me when she claimed that her trailer was too cold, though I had twice cranked up the heat to ‘11’ so that it was dripping humidity. I was re-hired the next day and instructed to wait in a car by her trailer with the car heater blasting in order to drive her 20 meters to the set. It was mid August. Soon after, while working as a waiter in New York, I wrote a spec murder mystery about my neighborhood by the old police station in Little Italy called “Shadowman.” I created a cool cover page in a copy shop, which you’re not supposed to do. Robert Altman’s then producer Matthew Seig just happened to be standing next to me and remarked on the cover. I gave him a copy. He soon optioned the screenplay, resulting in my being signed to William Morris. It’s been optioned several times since. My agent in Toronto is Charlie Northcote. Contact literary@coregroupta.ca for more info, or contact me at hwiseman@rogers.com. Howard (Howie) Wiseman ‘80